Pascal

WHAT CAN PASCAL TEACH US?

By Shant Norashkharian

Part I.

The Turk was the first imperialist of modern times. He taught the West two things, which the West later developed into unprecedented levels: Imperialism/enslaving/sucking up the resources of other nations, and eliminating any resistance by mass murders and deportations. Today, political imperialism has been largely substituted by economic imperialism, and the tyrants are global corporations/banks where the world's financial power is concentrated. The modern capitalist can achieve today by economic means and without shedding a drop of blood or dropping a bomb fa—more than the Turk did with his yataghans and cannons.

Pascal saw a threat to humanity in the blind pursuit of the physical sciences without a comparable advance in the development of man's conscience and spiritual capacity. The best example of this is a world which has the technicians and the technology to build nuclear weapons but not the moral responsibility to guide and restrain them. A world where the philosophers, poets and artists are banished to the outskirts of society while the power brokers play dice with man's destiny. The gap between man's technological and spiritual capacity was widened more than ever in this century, which was marked by the biggest genocides and wars in mankind's history. Pascal said:

"Vanity of science: Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science."

The Western culture which dominates the world today has designated reason as the most supreme faculty of man, while his other faculties like instinct, emotion, subconscience, psychic communication, etc. are treated as lowly handmaidens to be confined to the rooms behind the kitchen. The Eastern man has always known that these faculties are at least equally important to the pursuit of rational knowledge. While bookstores, concerts and galleries are everywhere, the personal experience of the arts and the development of other channels of understanding have fallen far behind the physical sciences, and the walls between individuals in Western society are higher than ever. The number of artistic activities, of course, has little to do with artistic/spiritual life, and the sustenance of such values as friendship and sensitivity.

Pascal foresaw the dangers of this unbalanced epistemological approach, which with the revival of Socrates, Aristotle and Plato during and after the renaissance, has ruled the world ever since. He wrote:

"We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. The skeptics have no other object than that, and they work at it to no purpose. We know that we are not dreaming, but, however unable we may be to prove it rationally, our inability proves nothing but the weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of all our knowledge, as they maintain. For knowledge of first principles, like space, time, motion, number, is as solid as any derived through reason, and it is on such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason has to depend and base all its argument. The heart feels —mthat there are three spatial dimensions and that there is an infinite series of numbers, and reason goes on to demonstrate that there are no two square numbers of which one is double the other. Principles are felt, propositions proved, and both with certainty though by different means. It is just as pointless and absurd for reason to demand proof of first principles from the heart before agreeing to accept them as it would be absurd for the heart to demand an intuition of all the propositions demonstrated by reason before agreeing to accept them.

Our inability must therefore serve only to humble reason, which would like to be the judge of everything, but not to confute our certainty. As if reason were the only way we could learn! Would to God, on the —mcontrary, that we never needed it and we knew everything by instinct and feeling! But nature has refused us this blessing, and has instead given us only very little knowledge of this kind; all other knowledge can be acquired only by reasoning."

High technology, imperialism, and the absolute reign of reason are not the only attributes of the modern Roman Empire and its satellites, the United States and its Western allies. The American culture suffers from the same illness as other imperialist nations where basic necessities of life are no longer the main preoccupation of living, namely boredom. When one is trapped in an eight-to-five cycle all his life, has a chicken in the pot and a car in the garage, what he needs most is entertainment. Not any entertainment, but escapist/passive entertainment. This great demand for escapism has given rise to a global movie industry, toys for adults and sports events watched by hundreds of millions around the world. It is not with—min the scope of this essay to discuss the effects of all this on modern man, except to say that they have imp—mersonalized, dehumanized, alienated him from himself and others to an extent where he thinks of bombing cities as some kind of a Nintendo game and of his neighbor as a nuisance because he mows his yard at the wrong time. Pascal has described this escapism, which during his time was mainly prevalent among the youth, by saying:

"Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?

But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion."

Anyone who has ordered his teenager to sit in the corner and do nothing for five minutes has witnessed this misery which has permeated all ages in our times.

Another way that this escapism displays itself is when the Western man/woman no longer lives for the present, but only for the future. Waiting, endlessly waiting for the next trip, the next car, the next raise, the next promotion, while the present passes by without return. Pascal says:

"Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so."

While the East was sleeping in the Turkish Dark Ages, the West developed its arts and sciences and brought about renaissance and enlightenment. In the Age of Reason, as Ara Baliozian wrote, "reason supplanted faith; (this was) an intellectual development that completely bypassed our communities living in the Dark Ages of the Ottoman Empire."

Along with higher civilization and military power in the West, also came arrogance and ignorance based on the myth that the East has nothing to teach the West. Today, everything of any significance happens in the "First World", while all wars/disasters/problems happen in the "Third World." In fact the two worlds are seen to be so distant, that no one speaks of the "Second World". This Western arrogance is accompanied by a high price tag, because by ignoring the Eastern "welt-anschaung" (view of the world), the West has embarked in a self-destructive course which is the mad pursuit of nothingness, for which everything in the present, especially the human being, is sacrificed.

The best way to illustrate the contrast between the Western and Eastern welt-anschaungs is to remember the story in Zorba The Greek, by Nikos Kazantsakis, whom I call the Greek Gosdan Zarian. This story is about Zorba, the Eastern man who was devoted to the full enjoyment of every passing moment. One day he wa—mlks by the garden of a hundred year old man and is baffled by seeing him planting an almond tree. He asks him: "What are you doing, old man? It will take three years for you to see the fruits of this tree, by then you will be long gone!" The old man answers: "I live every moment as if I shall live forever." To which Zorba answers: "And I live every moment as if I shall die any moment."

The Western man has lost the capacity of enjoying the present moment, and by chasing it all his life he dies without experiencing it.

Violence and drug use are inevitable consequences of alienation and escapism. To illustrate the foolishness of violence, Pascal wrote:

" 'Why are you killing me for your own benefit? I am unarmed.'

'Why, do you not live on the other side of the water? My friend, if you lived on this side, I should be a murderer, but since you live on the other side, I am a brave man and it is right.' "

He defined tyranny as "wanting to have by one means what can only be had by another", and he said: "Man is vile enough to bow down to beasts and even worship them."

Every society defines its own virtues and vices, according to the demands imposed on it by those who control its institutions. As Socrates argued that justice in a society and its laws are defined by the interests of the ruling class, in the same way morality, as Nietzsche argued, is a set of codes designed to control or govern the herd, and religion is only used to give supernatural validity to the values of the day. Pascal wrote:

"Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is." And:

"Larceny, incest, infanticide, parricide, everything has at some time been accounted a virtuous action. Could there be anything more absurd than that a man has a right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and his prince has picked a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?"

He quoted Seneca:

"It is by virtue of senatorial decrees and votes of the people that crimes are committed."

Democracy may be better than totalitarianism, but it comes at a very high price, considering that the vote of the wise is equal to that of the fool and the lowest common denominator of the poorest minds imposes the dictatorship of mediocrity upon the best and the greatest. Pascal wrote:

"Majority of opinion is the best way because it can be seen and is strong enough to command obedience, but it is the opinion of those who are least clever...

...Those who are strongest in numbers only want to follow, and refuse recognition to those who seek it for their originality. If they persist in wanting recognition and despising those who are not original, the others will call them ridiculous names and may even beat them..."

Part II.

THE DISASTER OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

The world today is led by the values of Western civilization, which state that ultimate happiness is based on ultimate success, and that ultimate success is only measured by wealth which is the highest end justified by all means. This mad pursuit of money and materialism has permeated every country and society, even Communist countries like China. Greed has become such an integral part of one's daily life, that anyone who does not pursue material possessions is viewed as some kind of a fool or freak. Modern man has become a soul-less, spirit-less, mind-less and conscience-less consumer, who is constantly looking for entertainment and the satisfaction of his senses. Everyone is lavishly praising the free market economy, as if it were the answer to all of mankind's prayers.

Yet behind all these shiny toys and action movies and endless commercials and amusement parks, behind all this drunken hedonism which dulls man's awareness of himself and of his place in the universe, behind all the glitter and luxury over which man drools like a dog, hides the wretchedness and hopelessness and blindness of modern man from which he so desperately tries to escape. Whether it is television or drugs or sex or vacations or sports or cars, it is the escape from himself that modern man seeks with his money even more than sensual pleasures. Yet the more he tries to escape from himself the more obsessed he becomes with himself. This is the ME-generation of the eighties and nineties, the Age of Escapism, the Age of Narcissism, the Age of stone idols and golden calves. Is not the phrase "civilized Westerner" an oxymoron (occi-moron)? Are we not subjected daily to advertisement by the Western mass media that Western "civilization" was a blessing to all mankind, and all other civilizations are inferior to it and that the whole world should follow the Western model? Has Western man changed in the last few hundred years? Pascal wrote:

"When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in the corner of the universe, without knowing who put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost and with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. I see other people around me, made like myself. I asked them if they are any better informed than I, and they say they are not. Then these lost and wretched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to which they become addicted and attached. For my part I have never been able to form such attachments, and considering how very likely it is that there exists something besides what I can see, I have tried to find out whether God has left any traces of himself."

We Armenians, aside from few brief periods in our history, have always been a spiritual people when we lived on our land. It is when we left our land that we became disintegrated intellectually and spiritually, by adopting the value systems of the odars. The Armenian in the colony has become a materialistic, greedy, apathetic, amoral, uncompassionate person who seeks nothing but financial success. The degeneration of the nation that is dispersed in the colonies of the Diaspora is best described by Gosdan Zarian in his book THE SHIP ON THE MOUNTAIN: (my translation)

"... But when there is no center of gravity, when that force is not powerful, always-renewing, always-creating gravity, the fragments that are pushed out of the land will constantly become less, lessened, and finally, pulverized...The elements which have escaped from the center distort everything: The language, the religion, the understanding of nation and homeland. Reality becomes disguised with empty words. Circumstantial scenes are created, void of growing potential and flowering sap...and even more happens; the centrifugal force no longer governs the parts, and the parts themselves adapt that force's fundamental ideals to their immediate, local conditions, they degenerate it, they derail it from its ordinary flow, they obscure the mystery of its essence. Therein is the real tragedy..."

"The colony is created..."

"Yes. The nation ceases to exist, and instead of it, a certain pseudo-nation is established..."

Some argue that perhaps it is our constant suffering and grief, being continually victimized every few decades over several millennia, that made us spiritual. But outside of our land, ironically, being more spiritual has made us even more vulnerable to materialism and greed. It is almost as if we were trying to compensate for our spiritual losses by accumulating wealth. Perhaps it was our way of taking revenge against the cruelty of life and the barbarism of the world. In describing how vulnerable the Armenian was to corruption outside of his homeland, and after observing how quickly those Armenians who had escaped from the Genocide and started a life in France in the twenties had changed, Shahan Shahnour wrote:

"You, Armenian bastard! You are the quickest to change to an animal if you were left without sorrow even for one day!"

More recently, another Armenian who had lost everything including his family after immigrating to America wrote:

"America is the national cemetery of Armenians".

It is in America and other colonies around the world that everything Armenian, including culture and language, eventually gets buried and the only things that survive are empty traditions and shishkebab. It is unfortunate that almost all Armenian intellectuals and writers like William Saroyan and Ara Baliozian have been totally silent in criticizing the destructive Western influence on the Armenian identity, and have lavished praise on Western countries by holding them as great role models for all Armenians, and by diminishing the value of Armenian culture and judging foreign cultures as superior to ours. In a time of great exodus and assimilation it is imperative that we understand and appreciate our own identity and culture, and realize that Western countries not only DO NOT provide all the answers to our problems, but they also dehumanize us by taking away our spirituality and corrupt us by destroying our value systems. There is no value left in the West that is sacred. Everything can be bought and sold, everything is traded on the Commodity Market. Contemporary Western writers have brought their own contribution to glorifying the culture of hedonism. An American writer, P.J. O'Rourke, wrote:

"Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you've half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose and a teenage lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you're doing a hundred miles an hour in a suburban side street."

A Belgian writer, Raoul Vaneigem, wrote:

"Production and consumption are the nipples of modern society. Thus suckled, humanity grows in strength and beauty; rising standard of living, all modern conveniences, distractions of all kinds, culture for all, the comfort of your dreams."

As it is said in the Bible, it is not money but the love of money that is the root of all evil. It is not the high standard of living but the price that modern man has to pay for it, is what makes it evil. This price includes devoting almost all waking hours to one's job, ignoring all social or artistic pursuits, destroying the family by divorce or by the mother working outside which results in raising a generation of irresponsible children, ignoring the care of the elderly and disposing of them in nursing homes, destroying the planet and depleting its resources, breathing polluted air, drinking polluted water, and being constantly invaded by noise during all hours of the day. It is a myth that these days both parents have to work to make a living. It is easier to make a living now than it was anytime in history. But it is man's greed and appetite for more material possessions, the desire to get that second car or bigger house that has created the family of two or more wage-earners. It is the false belief that man can realize himself through material things, as Herbert Marcuse described in his ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN:

"The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment."

"As we cannot be universal by knowing everything there is to be known about everything, we must know a little about everything, because it is much better to know something about everything than everything about something. Such universality is the finest. It would be still better if we could have both together, but, if a choice must be made, this is the one to choose. The world knows this and does so, for the world is often a good judge."

Obviously he is referring above to the world of Renaissance, where men like him and Leonardo Da Vinci with multiple talents and fields of knowledge were still honored and rewarded. Foolish and unrestrained consumerism necessitates foolish and unrestrained production, where man becomes one-dimensional and is reduced to the measure of his skill or to a pair of hands. Whether on a corporate ladder or in a factory, man which was created whole is reduced to a disposable and replaceable part. Man no longer examines his life and therefore his "unexamined life" is no longer "worth living". This is why Henry David Thoreau said "Most men live lives of quiet desperation", and this is why T.S. Eliot in his poem "The Hollow Men", wrote:

"We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw.

Alas! Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without color,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us_if at all_not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men The stuffed men."

The so-called civilized Western man has lost the sense of proportion of the essential versus the trivial, the permanent versus the temporary, the infinite versus the limited. Because of this he has created a meaningless life for himself and no matter how many diversions he creates from that reality, he is still helplessly bored, as Aldous Huxley described in the following quote:

"Oh, how desperately bored, in spite of their grim determination to have a Good Time, the majority of pleasure-seekers really are!"

When man loses his sense of proportion, when he regards himself and his desires as the center of the universe, when he loses sight of the fact that life on this earth is only a stage in a long journey in search of God, and forgets that he can take with him nothing but his works when he leaves this world, he turns to a beast, as witnessed by more savagery in this "civilized" century than any other. Pascal wrote in his essay "Disproportion of man" about the importance of this sense of proportion:

"Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and lofty majesty, let him turn his gaze away from the lowly objects around him; let him behold the dazzling light set like an eternal lamp to light up the universe, let him see the earth as a mere speck compared to the vast orbit described by this star, and let him marvel in finding this vast orbit itself to be no more than the tiniest point compared to that described by the stars revolving in the firmament. But if our eyes stop there, let our imagination proceed further; it will grow weary of conceiving things before nature tires of producing them... Let man, returning to himself, consider what he is in comparison with what exists; let him regard himself as lost, and from this little dungeon, in which he finds himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him take the earth, its realms, its cities, its houses and himself at their proper value."

We Armenians must realize that the Western countries are no more than temporary harbors for our broken ships. We must realize that a small part of our homeland is a reality today, and the rest will be a reality tomorrow. We must rediscover that inner light that has been guiding us for centuries but which today is covered with mud and mire. We must preserve our culture, language and values until that glorious day when we return to our lands and homes. This is not nationalism or chauvinism. This is believing in ourselves, our undefeatable voki which survived by refusing to kill, and prospered by refusing to plunder and burn. We must preserve our culture as a model for the world to follow, just like the rainforests must be preserved because of the thousands of plants that may provide cures for diseases some day. We must be proud of the fact that we rejected imperialism, barbarism, greed and materialism as long as we lived in our homeland. We must be proud that our hands are clean from the blood of the millions that were massacred by the so-called Christian Western countries in this century alone. Only when we reestablish our ancient connection with God and our spiritual roots, we shall earn our right to live in our homeland again.